This week’s links contain lots of stuff about crotchety geezers and sugary pastries.  There’s some other stuff as well, but a disappointing lack of excellent usage.  Oh well.  

Straight Talk on Hope – Columnist Bob Pratte from The Press Enterprise in Riverside, California wrote that he thought the Simpsons stamps would out sell the Bob Hope stamps.  He then got irate letters from old people.  Observe:

I discussed Hope because he was commemorated with a stamp that was released a week ago. I predicted Bart Simpson and his cartoon family, who were featured on stamps that went on sale earlier in May, will outsell the Hope stamps.

“Let me tell you, Bob Hope had more class and humor in one little finger than the whole Simpson family will ever have,” wrote Ronna Clymens, of Banning, who does not consider the cartoon characters’ material as humor, but merely a collection of trashy jokes,

“Just because the post office is selling a bunch of stamps with the Simpson family doesn’t make the Simpsons funny or humorous. I think it was an insult to America’s intellect to even issue such a stamp.

There’s more if you click the link, but this also deserves to be highlighted:

“Some of the younger people are buying the Simpson stamps, but the seniors don’t even want to see them,” he said.

“I used to be with it, but then they changed what “it” was, now what I’m with isn’t “it” and what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me.  It’ll happen to you.”  True words Grandpa, true words.  

Free donuts, Pay-for-view Hulu – Today, June 5, is national donut day, or some such nonsense.  Needless to say every third news story about this mentions Homer.  Oh, and that rumor going around about Hulu getting ready to charge a subscription fee?  It’s attributable to one Jon Miller, who’s in charge of the digital division at News Corp.  Say it with me, everybody: “Fuck you, FOX”.  

Canadian scam hits the north state – A mail fraud scam sends out letters to old people telling them they’ve won a “Reader’s Digest-Pepsi Cola contest”.  The contact name on the scam?  Kent Brockman.  Seriously:

McClain, who tried to contact “Brockman” just to hear what he might have to say, said a woman who answered the telephone with the greeting “Pepsi Cola” said he was unavailable.

“He was probably doing the Simpsons’ show,” McClain joked.

“Oh, it’s not a swindle.  What you do is, see, you give ’em all your credit card numbers, and if one of them is lucky they’ll send you a prize.”  

Krispy Kreme Wedding Cake – It’s just a bunch of pictures of cakes made out of donuts.   It mentions Homer in the most perfunctory of ways, but it makes the link dump because it’s cakes made out of donuts!  What’s not to love about that?

simpsons couture – More leftover promotional stuff from the movie, this time it’s the family with a bunch of famous fashion designers.  I’d never seen these before and I don’t know fuck all about fashion, so I’ll just assume that these are accurate representations.  And, it being donut day and all, it reminded me of Homer’s donut fashion show from “Treehouse of Horror IV”:

Creeped out by birds? Blame Alfred Hitchcock – A discussion of The Birds and its relevance to the Ayn Rand School for Tots in “A Streetcar Named Marge”.  No mention of Hans Moleman needing the biggest seed bell they have in “Itchy & Scratchy Land”.  

Homer Simpson Nacho Man – Posit: You have decided to start a blog about nachos.  This will include nacho recipes, discussions of ingredients, etcetera.  Question: What is the best topic for your first post?  Answer: YouTube clip of Homer singing the Nacho Man song . . . in Spanish!  Excelente!

Small problem: It is unwise to copy and paste your “History of Nachos” page directly from the Wikipedia entry for nachos.  And I mean straight copied, the footnotes are still in the text.  

Not-So-Neighborly – Writing an advice column based on popular culture is a good idea.  Using Flanders to explain a neighbor situation is even better.  

50 funniest Homer Simpson Quotes – This list of Homer quotes has been floating around the internet pretty much since the dawn of time.  I’m only linking to this instance of it because it allows me to once again point out that this quote is incorrect:

# Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that.

He says “forfty”, not “fourteen”.  

The Target Demographic – I tend to steer clear of the “Family Guy vs. The Simpsons” discussion because I don’t think it’s fair.  Zombie Simpsons is incredibly different than real Simpsons, but they are routinely conflated when discussing the Simpsons versus other cartoons.  This guy makes a distinction.

Comma quirk irks Rogers – A comma cost Canadian company Rogers Communications $2 million.  Shades of Lionel Hutz’s famous advertisement:

(Via.)

The Simpsons + Family Circus – Once again I’ll give the final word to another blogger who’s down on Zombie Simpsons:

And that’s probably why The Simpsons has lost its appeal with its most diehard fans, the ones that grew up watching them and understand the TV show as culture. Suddenly in these latest seasons, the Simpson family has become a caricature: Homer the dumb one, Lisa the smart one, Bart the rebellious one, Marge the one with the head screwed on correctly etc. To borrow from Shrek from Shrek, the Simpsons family used to have layers.

A caricature of a caricature ain’t no thing to be.